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An Expose of “Blackwater”, a Book Written With a Leftist Agenda

By Jeff “Mario” Smith

Guerilla Reporter

Reading is an excellent pastime, surely much better than watching the television, a dumbing down mechanism if ever there was one. Entertainment is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country and much of it is used as a tool of propaganda. I give you Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, and George Cloony as some perfect examples of entertainment as propaganda.

Entertainment is expected in our society now, so much so that even the “news”, which I would argue is largely propaganda as well, has to be given to the sheeple as entertainment packaged in current music, sound effects, opinions from entertainers of all things, and pop culture buzz words.

Recently, I received an email from a friend, who is admittedly a Christian Conservative, which details some of the overt problems with the book “Blackwater” by Jeremy Scahill. I have to admit that Scahill is a good writer who can grab your interest and has an excellent command of the English language, but his association with the publication, “The Nation” is called out in this “laymen’s book review” and makes the book suspect from the start. And I would have to agree that any book using Michael Moore’s opinion on the back cover is surely a bad sign. A read of the preface alone reveals that Scahill has an agenda and this book, which could have been a good “study” of the private contracting in war debate, quickly becomes just another in a long line of leftist hit pieces.

Read this amateur review and scan the book the next time you are in a book store. I would not recommend buying a copy so not as to fund any more liberalism; we surely have too much of that already. As Dr. Michael Savage so aptly states, “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” It may not have started out that way, but it sure is a mental disorder now.

Jim:

Regarding Blackwater... I was skeptical when I read the front and back, especially when I saw that the author is a contributor to "The Nation" an extreme left publication. He even gave space on his cover to that moron Michael Moore. Who on God's green earth thinks Michael Moore is valid other than folks on the extreme left? He calls Moore an academy award winning director. I consider Michael Moore a moron, an extreme left moron who abuses the power that his money and status in the leftist entertainment world gives him. He also lets a NY Times bureau chief chime in on the "quality" of the book. Talk about an invalid mainstream media publication, liberals to the core and definitely at the top of the list that is the "enemy within".

Also he dedicates the book to embedded journalists. I consider journalists nothing more than "news whores" and many of the embedded ones are the reason that our country's population is so propagandized against the war.

But I thought it would be interesting so I gave it a shot. My suspicions have been confirmed. This guy is far left and his book has an agenda. It comes off totally anti-civilian contractor right from the start. He doesn't even give the concept a decent pro / con analysis.  

Here are some things I found in the preface alone and I am not even done with that.

1) He isn't very kind to Rumsfeld's small footprint approach precipitating the jump to the provate sector for contractors. We all know that bureaucracies are unmovable behemoths and that the left has systematically been dismantling and downsizing our military for decades. In that light, what is one to do but go to the private sector? I am not advocating mercenaries at this point, just understanding why Rumsfeld et al may have felt compelled to go this route. Of course, a liberal won't see this, as this author so obviously cannot. Basically, Rumsfeld was in the business of using the private sector as an alternative to an unwieldy and handcuffed bureaucracy. Does this raise questions of constitutionality and civil rights? Sure it does, especially when they operate as police or national guards on our soil.

Question: Is Rummy's small footprint approach pure Rumsfeld or is it in response to a defense department that has been handcuffed and downsized by liberals in Congress and elsewhere?

Hint to my response: I see Reagan's allegedly "illegal" war in South America as one of his most heroic moments as a Great American protecting the future of Liberty. He did whatever it took to fight the communists, regardless of what the peaceniks, academia, mainstream media, and liberals in Congress thought. God bless him for it.

2) The author states, "Even as the US gave the public appearance of diplomacy, behind closed doors Halliburton was being prepped for its largest operation in history.” Here he is assuming  that the USG was not serious about diplomacy with that madman. Who is to say that any diplomacy would ever have worked with that evil bastard? Liberals always assume that diplomacy will solve everything. He fails to mention that diplomacy may not have been a possible end to saddam’s threat to the world. I tend to think it was not possible.

3) He says, “By the end of Rumsfeld’s tenure there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq – an almost one to one ratio to active-duty soldiers.” Here he conveniently leaves out that many of these folks were cooks, kitchen helpers, warehouse personnel, mechanics and technicians, truck drivers, and so many other jobs that are outside the realm of “mercenaries”. This is what leftists do. They conveniently leave out facts that could spell defeat for their rhetoric. Then he starts moving into classifying all this as a “war machine” not even thinking of classifying it as a “defense industry”, which it surely could be.

4) He says, “Blackwater is a private army, and is controlled by one person: Erik Prince, a radical right-wing Christian mega-millionaire who has served as a major bankroller not only of President Bush’s campaigns, but of the broader Christian-right agenda. In fact, as of this writing Prince has never given a penny to a Democrat candidate – certainly his right, but an unusual pattern for the head of such a powerful war-servicing corporation, and one that speaks volumes about the sincerity of his ideological commitment.”

OK, here you go. Notice how this liberal associates Christian with "radical right wing". This is what the left is all about and exposes the author's leftist extremism. They think that Christians are radicals. I am telling you, this author is part of the “enemy within” apparatus that supports people like the klintonistas, Nancy Pelosi, Dennis Kucinich et al. It is this aspect of who this guy is, his association with the radical left wing “The Nation”, and his whining that this corporate head has not given any money to Democrats which combine to hurt the ability of this book to be a valid “study” of Blackwater as opposed to an attack mechanism.

As far as never giving a penny to a Democrat is concerned, how could a true Christian do that, give money to a Democrat whose party advocates the death and dismemberment of defenseless babies, advocates the removal of God from the public square unless we misname him "allah", and always takes the sides of America’s enemies in wars and other conflicts? He fails to make this possibility, of course. So because Erik Prince does not give money to Democrats, is opposed to abortion, the ACLU and its associated anti-Christ agenda, he is a right wing radical? Hmm, I guess I am as well then. I must admit there is comfort in knowing that the left is so scared of Christianity that they label Christians as "radicals".

5) He took a question posed by the extreme left politician Dennis Kucinich to a Mr. Assad, the head of defense procurement and acquisition in the Pentagon, and did not mention that Assad’s answer was totally appropriate when he said, “Sir, I cannot answer that question.” It was above Assad's pay grade to answer that question. Kucinich took this answer and twisted it into, “These private contractors can get away with murder.” I think that is a huge stretch, especially in a war zone, but liberals and I think differently. Of course, I know that there can actually be a murder in a war zone; just not what the left would say is a murder as can be seen by the frivolous assaults against many of our troops, and our border guards as well.

6) He uses a quote by Michael Ratner, who is president of the liberal group "Center for Constitutional Rights" [liberals always use names that make their groups sound so good and wholesome like the ACLU for instance] where Ratner hints that the Iraq War is a "hegemonic imperialist war". Now, this is a common attack by liberals; that America engages in imperialist wars, when the opposite is true. You can count on liberals to state things upside down from reality. America does not engage in war to seek more land or to covet what their neighbor has. America goes to war to protect Liberty, her own, and that of others. Liberals never get this. Hmm, Rat-ner is an appropriate name I believe, and a Demonrat I am sure. FYI - Rat-ner’s leftist group has sued private contractors for human right violations. I don't believe in human rights for terrorists thank you very much.

I would agree however, that private contractors need to be held to some sort of recognized legal standard or they could do more damage than good, but the left takes that legal standard and misuses it to handcuff our military and therein lies the problem. Example: our troops now go into battle with one hand tied behind their backs [rules of engagement for instance] so as to avoid lawsuits from leftist lasyers working for organizations with friendly sounding names. So, maybe all this private contracting defense industry is in response to what the Kucinichs of the world have done to our defense capabilities and not some sort of evil right wing profiteering agenda as this liberal contributor to "The Nation" wants his readers to believe.

This author, Jeremy Scahill, attacks the off shore corporate setup of a subsidiary of Blackwater as some sort of evil agenda. Could this not again be in response to the armies of liberal lawyers that are used by the “enemy within” in order to handcuff our military, our Christianity, and so many other aspects of our culture that the left has destroyed?

He does a good job of scaring us about Blackwater and I admit that I am concerned about a private company getting so powerful that it can overthrow governments, if indeed that is true [I think a girl's soccer team could overthrow some governments out there] but this is the wrong guy to make this case. His ability to convince a large part of the people is hamstringed by his overt leftism and anti-Christian bigotry which is so obvious in this book.

No. 4

I have read the preface to “Blackwater”, and Number 4 gives a short and incomplete review of this book that I can agree with. I would add that reading deeper into "Blackwater" exposes a virulent anti-Christian bogotry in the author that is rather disgusting and with its constant harangue actually becomes boring. Enough already Jeremy Scahill, we understand you don't like Christians, let it go!  It is important when we read books to consider the source and to read with an open mind. We must always be on the lookout for propaganda as opposed to facts, the misusing of facts, and most powerful, the omission of facts in order to steer the readers’ opinions in a certain direction. The mainstream media do a masterful job of propagandizing the American public in order to control public opinion for example.

I give the book “Blackwater” by leftist Jeremy Scahill a very definite thumbs down! Too bad, this could have been a good book had it been written free of the author's personal agenda. Scahill missed the opoprtunity for his book to be a study of private contracting to the military as opposed to a liberal hit piece. If Mr. Scahill’s book title was “Blackwater and the Liberal’s Argument Against Private Military Contracting”, it would have been appropriate and honest as well. His dishonesty, a liberal mainstay, though expected from a contributor to “The Nation”, is nonetheless ugly.

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